


Never apologize, mister, it's a sign of weakness

by seektheinfinite



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Apologies, Friendship, Gen, Team Bonding, Team Feels, episode tag: s01e01, post episode s01e01 pilot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26485435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seektheinfinite/pseuds/seektheinfinite
Summary: After a talk with Gil, Malcolm decides that Dani might need an apology, post S01E01
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & Dani Powell
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	Never apologize, mister, it's a sign of weakness

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, so I just discovered Prodigal Son and I am hooked already. This is my first work for this show, and my first work for a long time so I hope you like it. It's just a little episode tag for episode one to get my writing juices flowing, and see if I could do these amazing characters justice.

“Detective Powell, have you got a minute?”

Dani paused, before replying, as though considering her answer. “That depends, are you gonna do or say something stupid?”

Malcolm couldn’t help but smirk at her snarky reply, “Well judging by how this week is going so far, I can’t promise anything, but I can promise that I don’t have anything stupid planned, if that helps.”’

“Fine” Dani was already moving towards the empty conference room, not stopping to check whether Malcolm was following her. He almost ran into the back of her though, when she stopped suddenly, and said with no hint of irony in her voice, “Just remember that I do have a gun, and I will use it if I have too.” Her hand brushed her holstered weapon for emphasis, before she turned back to the open door and walked through into the conference room. 

Malcolm gulped involuntarily. Gil had been right when he said Dani was from the Bronx, it was becoming blatantly obvious that Dani was a lot tougher than he had first assumed. 

“So.” Dani slumped into one of the vacant chairs along the side of the long table, arms folded, giving him a glare that would have made any perp break down and confess within seconds. 

Malcolm slid into the chair opposite her, deliberately keeping the table between them. He knew exactly what he was doing, and felt no shame in admitting, at least to himself, that he felt more comfortable with the physical barrier between them. He knew that she would never hurt him, certainly not deliberately, but she was intimidating. He was used to dealing with strong, dominant women, his mother being one of them, but Dani was different. She was physically strong for sure, hard and dominant on the outside, but he’d gotten glimpses of her softer interior over the past couple of days, and what he could only describe as genuine concern for his welfare, something he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. 

Of course his mother ‘said’ that she cared, and that she just wanted what was best for him, but in reality Malcolm had always had the sense that he was more of a burden to her, something to be managed and dealt with, rather than loved and nurtured. Ever since that fateful night that he’d brought her precious little world crashing down around them all. 

Malcolm found himself snapping back into the room with a quick rap on the table from Dani, obviously he’d been ruminating in his head a little too long. 

“Right, yeah, sorry. Heads all over the place today.” Malcolm squirmed in his seat, it suddenly felt like he was sitting on a slab of stone, and no matter how he sat he just couldn’t get comfortable. Is this how suspects felt they were being interrogated? Concentrate Malcolm, he chided himself inwardly. 

“So I wanted to apologise…” He left the unfinished sentence hanging in the air, hoping that Dani would fill in the blanks and that the conversation could be ended before it had really begun. Admitting to his weaknesses had never been his strong suit, and being his mother's son, he had always been brought up never to apologise for his mistakes, to merely do whatever was necessary to get around them, brush them under the carpet as it were. 

“Uh-huh, care to elaborate there ‘Bright’? His last name said with a tone of derision. Gil had told him that JT and Dani knew about his true identity, and his sordid backstory. It just didn’t make it any easier when he was sitting here being confronted about it. “I mean, you’ve already racked up a pretty decent list of dumb things you’ve said and done over the past couple of days.” Dani leaned back into her chair, folding her arms across her chest once again, waiting for Malcolm to continue, she wasn’t letting him off the hook that easily. 

“Okay, so I’m sorry I lied to you about who I was, but as I’m sure you can imagine, I don’t really like to go around advertising the identity of my infamous father. Sure my mother and sister like to wear it like a badge of honor, ‘I survived the surgeon’, but as you can imagine in this line of work it’s not the best name to be associated with.”

Dani nodded slowly, before replying “I get that. We’ve all got skeletons in the closet.” He couldn’t help but wince at her choice of language, memories of the girl in the box always skittering just below the surface. Dani must have noticed his discomfort, before correcting herself. “Sorry, bad choice of words. What I’m trying to say, is that we’ve all got things in our past we’d rather not be associated with, I get why you’d want to change your name, and why you wouldn’t want to advertise who you are. I mean yeah, I was pissed that Gil had brought you when I found out, but that’s not why I went to him. You scared me last night Bright. Begging a serial killer to kill you? Is that really how you feel, that you deserve the pain because of who your dad is?”

Dani’s vision dropped from his face to his trembling hand as he raised it to brush a stray hair away from his face, an attempt to delay answering. She wasn’t supposed to see that, no one was supposed to see that side of him. Broken Malcolm was for when he was alone, where no one else could see, but in that moment, had he really wanted to die?

He sighed, slapping his other hand over the trembling one in an attempt to stop it, not that it would help, it just made him feel better to be doing ‘something’. “Yes, no, I don’t know. Honestly, I have spent years of therapy trying to figure out all of this. What you saw yesterday, it won’t happen again, I promise. I’ve got a handle on it now, I just, yesterday was a really bad day, the first time seeing ‘The Surgeon’ in 10 years, and it got to me, I’m sorry. 

Dani frowned at his use of the nickname when he spoke about his father, but didn’t question it, what she did question was…

“That’s not what I asked Bright!” She almost shouted the words, a hint of anger behind them that Malcolm couldn’t help but be startled by. “I don’t want you to ‘hide’ it. If you’re going to be a member of this team then you’ve got to let us in, the only way this is gonna work is if we can trust each other. I need to know if you’re gonna try and get yourself killed every time we go out on a case, because there ain't no way I’m putting my arse on the line for you everytime if you’re just gonna try and check out every chance you get.”

Malcolm studied her face, her body language, arms no longer folded, she was on her feet, leaning over to his side of the table, she really did care about what happened to him, despite the fact they’d only met days before. 

“I can’t promise I won’t do something stupid again that puts me in danger,” he stalled her interruption by raising his hand, “but I promise I’ll try not too. I don’t want to die, not really, I mean sometimes, when I’m alone at night I consider how I might do it, you know, but it’s never really ‘on the agenda’, just a fleeting thought. I just got, caught up in the moment, I reacted, I saw you in danger and I wanted to stop him. Honestly, I wasn’t really thinking, and I’m sorry.”

The silence sat heavily in the conference room as Dani obviously considered his words, Malcolm not wanting to interrupt her thought processes for fear of getting yelled at again. Before he knew what was happening, or had processed enough to react, Dani was moving around the table to his side of the room, her arms wrapped around him, squeezing him so tight he thought he might explode. 

“Jeez Bright, you’re way too skinny, do you eat at all?” She released him, before playfully slapping him on the back. “That’s for making me worry about you, next time it will be harder. Just remember I have a gun, and I will use it if necessary.” She smiled down at him, obviously taking great amusement from his look of pure shock as he sat frozen in the chair. 

“Oh and Bright,” she called over her shoulder, making her way out of the conference room, Bright still frozen in a look of horror, “next time you think about doing something stupid, don’t! Call me instead, and we can do something less stupid together, okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, have a great day :)


End file.
